Friday, September 5, 2008

TV Networks Scramble To Make A Happy Ending For Fans

Once NASCAR made the announcement of the big Richmond schedule change there were certainly a lot of phone calls and emails flying in the sports TV world. Networks directly affected were ABC, ESPN, SPEED and ESPN2.

The biggest blow is that the Sprint Cup Series race steps-off the very big stage of the ABC television network in prime-time on Saturday night and moves to ESPN on Sunday at 1PM.

One interesting note is that ESPN has decided not to originate a NASCAR Countdown show before this race. Needless to say, this is a big event in the season-long Sprint Cup Series.

On ESPN the highly-rated NFL Countdown show is scheduled from 11AM to 1PM and over on ESPN2 there is a IRL support race. This is the live finale for the Indy Lights from 12:30 to 1:30PM.

The decision not to move the ESPN2 program and originate the full one hour NASCAR Countdown show for this crucial final race before The Chase is a big one. What a tough call.

It will actually be SPEED that takes advantage of this situation and schedules the NASCAR RaceDay program from 11AM to 1PM. This puts SPEED back in the position of covering the events at the track right up until the network TV coverage of the race begins.

Just a reminder, Sprint RaceView on NASCAR.com is free for the Sunday afternoon Cup race by clicking here for the link page. This is a fun computer broadband application that shows multiple camera angles, driver audio and has lots of other gadgets.

Over on ESPN2, there will be a thirty minute edition of NASCAR Countdown at 6:30PM as the lead-in to the Nationwide Series race coverage at 7PM.

Despite the Nationwide race being live, SPEED is going to keep the normal Sunday night block of SPEED Report at 7PM, Victory Lane at 8PM and Wind Tunnel at 9PM.

Currently, we are still waiting to see if ESPN decides to add a Sunday night episode of NASCAR Now to wrap-up the long day of racing. Once we get that info, we will pass it along.

Now that Sunday is set, let's turn out attention to Saturday. There is still a lot of NASCAR TV to be seen and all of it is on SPEED. At 11AM, Rick Allen will host NCTS qualifying live from Gateway with Phil Parsons. Doug Richert will be stepping-in this week for Michael Waltrip who is in Richmond.

At 12:30PM, the always opinionated NASCAR AP reporter Jenna Fryer brings her views to Tradin' Paint. John Roberts hosts this program and Kyle Petty is the other panelist.

That will be followed at 1PM by Larry McReynolds and NASCAR Performance. Bootie Barker and Chad Knaus join McReynolds and these three talk NASCAR strategy and other interesting topics from a crew chief perspective.

At 1:30, NASCAR in a Hurry will try to find something to show fans for thirty minutes. This show recaps the happenings from the time the teams arrived at the track up to show time. TV veteran Randy Pemberton will have the challenge of making this show into something memorable.

Krista Voda appears at 2PM to host The Set-Up. This is the pre-race show for the NCTS and is always interesting. Allen and company begin the race coverage next at 2PM. Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander will be patrolling pit road for the Trucks.

There is no info on what programming the ABC stations will be using to fill Saturday night now that NASCAR is gone. SPEED is going to stick a re-air of Trackside into the Midnight timeslot that Victory Lane was going to use.

All-in-all, a scramble that resulted in some good decision-making from the TV networks to keep on-the-air most of the NASCAR TV that fans have come to know each weekend from the two remaining NASCAR TV partners, ESPN and SPEED.

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JD, I thought the IRL support race was supposed to be live, as part of the contract this year? Anyhoo, in the case that the Sprint Cup race was rained out on Sunday, could it end up on ABC on Monday, if ran at 10 in the morning or so?

Hey. I see there is a NASCAR Countdown before the Nationwide race. Will this actually be a pre-race show or do you think they will wrap-up the cup race but still called it NASCAR Countdown? I hope they just mix the two. recap what happend in cup and then preview nationwide.

If I were an Indy Lights racing fan, who already had a fixed time slot on ESPN2, I'd be rather hacked that my race was moved to a much less distributed channel for a pre-race show. Regularly scheduled events should always air on time and on the same channel.

JD, I'm sorry for posting this here but you seem to have disabled users from posting on the Friday in-progress post.....

To the "anon" that told me I was wrong about the Chase in the Friday in-progress post, please note that there are two seperate Chases - the Driver's Chase and the Owner's Chase. The top 12 drivers have their points reset after Richmond and seeded based on wins. The top 12 car owners also have their points reset after Richmond and seeded based on wins. They don't necessarily have to mirror each other, though coincidentally they always have from '04-'07.

Say for instance the #8 car (with Martin/Almirola splitting driving duties) finished 10th in owner's points after Richmond. They would make the Owner's Chase and the team of the 12th place driver in the driver's standings, who would actually be 13th in owner's points, would miss the Owner's Chase.

If you remember, NASCAR and the media had this discussion last year when the Mark Martin / Regan Smith #01 Army car was on the verge of possibly ending up 12th or better in owner's points after Richmond (they ended up falling out and barely missing). In fact, Ken Schrader called John Darby during an Inside Nextel Cup episode to have Darby explain to the world what I just explained earlier. Top 12 drivers in a Driver's Chase, Top 12 Owners in an Owner's Chase.

It's an irrelevant point now, but in my Friday example if Tony Stewart won Richmond driving the #02 car (or any other car than the #20 for that matter), Stewart the driver would start the Driver's Chase with 5010 points for his one win, but the #20 car would only start with 5000 points in the Owner's Chase for its zero wins (assuming of course it stayed in the top 12 in owner's points after Richmond and qualified for the Owner's Chase). As another ridiculous example, if Kyle Busch was injured or sick and completely sat this Richmond race out (didn't even start the car) and someone else like Joey Logano won the race replacing him in the 18 car, Kyle would start the Driver's Chase with 5080 points, while the #18 car would start the Owner's Chase with 5090.

Check the final owner's points from 2004-2007 and you will see that the owner's points were reset after Richmond each year just like the driver's points were. You will see that the final driver's standings and owner's standings among Chasers always mirrored each other... with the lone exception of the #97 car having more points than Kurt Busch in '05 due to Busch being suspended for the final two races of that season.

Had they reset ONLY driver's points and not owner's points (as you claimed) the #24 team would have won the Cup owner's title last year instead of the #48 team, and that wasn't the case. Jimmie Johnson won the Driver's Title and the #48 team won the Owner's Title.

sonicad , i'm not sure the IRL has as much to worry about as you might think . Going against the NFL is always a problem for any sport , but against NASCAR with their rapidly declining fan base , the IRL will do just fine .

I wonder what NASCAR is going to do about the post-Cup race photo shoots and such. Usually after the Chase drivers are determined, they stick around after the race for official group pictures and lots of interviews on Victory Lane and other shows, and stuff like that. They're usually on a big stage taking the pictures, and fans can stay and watch them be interviewed, and they throw merchandise out to the fans by the stage.

But now several of them will have to run the Nationwide race and I assume the Victory Lane area will have to come down quickly.

It's always enjoyable to watch after that race because those guys are very relaxed. In the past either Kurt Busch or Dale Jr, whichever one made the chase, always had a cooler of beer going around as the drivers did their interviews. It's kind of fun to see Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson standing around with their beer! But not tomorrow, I guess, since several of them will be getting back in cars.

sonicad , i'm not sure the IRL has as much to worry about as you might think . Going against the NFL is always a problem for any sport , but against NASCAR with their rapidly declining fan base , the IRL will do just fine .

Noticed on the ticker they're running "Sprint Cup Series Chevy Rock and Roll 500" but just "Nationwide Series". Guess Emerson didn't buy any ads for the race. Remember when Fox first did that when they got into NASCAR and the uproar it caused?